Chapter 30

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Chapter 30

Andala let Girard lead her into the hallway. Safe , she told herself, still feeling panicky, light-headed. You're safe here. There's nothing to fear .

But as they stepped into the kitchen, it was fear that gripped her still, though it was of a different kind now – a sharp, specific fear, one she thought she'd left behind five long years ago.

‘Daddy!' Amie cried as Girard entered. ‘Grandma made me some cocoa to have with my porridge.'

‘ Coo-coo , did you say?' Girard bent down before the chair Amie was seated on, blocking her from Andala's view. Leilyn watched them fondly from beside the stove. ‘What in all the worlds is coo-coo ?'

A giggle, melodious, delighted. ‘Not coo-coo – cocoa.'

‘Ahh, I see. Cocoa .' Girard made a show of plucking the mug from her hands, sniffing its contents. ‘But it smells too delicious! It must be a trick. I shall have to try some to learn more.'

He lifted the mug to his lips. Still laughing, Amie squirmed out of her seat in an attempt to snatch it back, and Andala saw her properly for the second time.

It was like looking at a miniature version of herself. She had thought she'd overestimated the resemblance when she'd caught the first glimpse; Amie had been half in the dark, and Andala had been in shock. But there was no denying it here in the kitchen's warm light. Those were her 219 dark eyes, wide-set and stark. Even the shape of the mouth was similar, and the little half-moons beneath the eyes – Andala had thought she'd developed those as she'd grown older and wearier, but now she had no doubt that she'd had them since she was a child, just like Amie.

Amie .

As if Andala had said her name out loud, the girl stopped playing games with Girard, and looked directly at her. She seemed as fascinated by Andala as Andala was by her. Could she see the resemblance, too? Would it mean anything to her young mind?

Time seemed to stretch out. Andala became suddenly aware again of what it meant that they were here in the same room.

She's right there , a voice murmured, far in the back of her head. You could do it now. Nothing's stopping you. You could pass it on.

Andala took a step forward.

It will be easy. Instinctive. Like pulling a knife from a wound. Like opening your palm and letting a butterfly go free.

She could feel it already: the power – the pain – bubbling up inside her, begging to be released. Icy and sharp, it flowed out from her heart, beneath her skin, all the way to her fingertips. She knew, somehow, that all it would take was one touch.

Another step. The girl was so close now.

Not the girl . Your daughter.

That voice was different. It sounded more like her own.

Andala ignored it. The feeling of her power welling up within her was overwhelming. This was different to how it felt when she transformed. Less painful. Easier. It would be so easy.

Andala stopped. How quickly had she crossed the room? Had she been staring at the girl for years, or only seconds?

Not the girl , the voice repeated. Your daughter. You are her mother. Do not become like your own. 220

‘Andala.'

She was suddenly aware of a grip on her arm, somebody shaking her. The power flowing through her limbs receded in an instant. There was a brief, icy clasp around her heart – then it was gone again, dormant like it had been for days now, and Andala was herself once more, woken from her trance like a sleepwalker.

Finally, she tore her eyes away from Amie.

Leilyn stood at her side. Her fingers were tight around Andala's arm. Andala caught the look on her face, there and then gone: a look of recognition, and regret. But then, she might have imagined it, because Leilyn's expression was as calm and cool as ever.

‘Girard,' she said, her eyes still on Andala, ‘why don't you take Amie upstairs?'

Andala broke away to watch as Girard ushered Amie from the room. She was half-hidden in front of him, clutching one of his hands. But she turned back, briefly, to look at Andala once more, and the emotion in her eyes was unmistakeable.

She looks as afraid of me as I am of her.

‘Do you know?' came Leilyn's voice, jolting Andala from her daze. ‘What has happened with the night?'

She followed her mother back to the table. ‘That's why I came here. I thought you might be able to help.'

‘I feared something had happened to you,' Leilyn said, sinking heavily into a chair. ‘To your power.'

Andala's stomach clenched unpleasantly at the word, but she ignored it. ‘Not to me. To the skylark.'

Leilyn sat silent for a moment, absorbing this. ‘Is she dead?'

‘Alive,' Andala said, her throat dry. ‘But she refuses to sing.'

Leilyn nodded slowly. ‘Where is she?'

‘The palace.' 221

Her mother's gaze sharpened. ‘So the king has her.'

‘Yes.'

Silence again. Faintly, Andala could hear the crackle of flames in the sitting room. It had been her favourite place in the house, all those years ago.

‘Does he know about you?' There was a note of worry in Leilyn's calm, measured voice that no one but Andala would have heard. She shook her head, and Leilyn nodded again. ‘Good. Good.'

There was another agonisingly quiet moment. Then: ‘I need your help,' Andala burst out. Sitting here, in her old home, in the chair she'd sat on for fifteen years, was pushing her towards the edge. She needed to get this done and leave, before she fell apart entirely. ‘The king – he's going to start hurting her to try to get her to sing. We need a way to stop him from doing that.'

Leilyn sat back in her chair, regarding Andala with new interest. ‘So you know her.'

‘I … What?'

‘You know the skylark. Care for her, too, I'd wager, if you've come all this way.'

Andala had always hated how Leilyn could read her. Old, long-dormant anger began to awaken in her chest. She pushed it down. Ignoring her mother's words, she pressed on.

‘ You know things about the skylark. You used to talk to me about her. So we need your help – not just to save her, but to make the sun rise again. Will you help us?'

‘Have you transformed, since it happened?' Leilyn asked, disregarding the question.

Andala clenched her fists beneath the table. It was so like her mother, to talk around the point this way. ‘No,' she ground out. ‘Of course I haven't. I've no need to.' 222

‘But you could still transform, if you wished.' Leilyn cocked her head to the side. ‘Or have you not yet mastered transforming at will?'

Andala stood. The scrape of chair legs on wood was abrasive in the quiet. Her anger flared now, bright and hot, like a flame fed with paper. ‘Why in the skies would I want to master that? Why would I want to change other than when I have to?'

Her mother gave her a look. Pitying. Infuriating. ‘So you are still fighting against your nature. Oh, Andala. After all this time …'

‘My nature? It was not my nature until you forced it upon me.'

Leilyn opened her mouth, but Andala cut her off. They had had this conversation before. She had not come here to have it again.

She sat back down. Briefly, she explained what she and Kitt hoped to do with the mechanical bird. ‘If you know anything about her song,' Andala finished, ‘or some way we might recreate it … we would be grateful for your help.' The last she said through gritted teeth, but meant it nonetheless.

Leilyn sat for a while, seemingly lost in thought. ‘I don't know the skylark's song,' she said eventually. ‘I have never heard it. I fear it will be … impossible to recreate.'

Andala's heart sank to the soles of her feet. Some part of her had expected to hear as much, but the words sent her reeling with disappointment just the same.

‘It's our last hope,' she said faintly, almost to herself. ‘It's our last hope and it's not going to work.'

Leilyn moved her chair closer to Andala, inclining her body towards her. Andala was vaguely aware that Leilyn had reached out a hand as if to touch hers, and then withdrawn it.

‘Could you not speak to her? Surely she would listen to you, if you explained to her what was at stake?'

Andala shook her head. ‘She's not herself. Or she is, but …' 223 She forced herself to look up at her mother. ‘They killed her father. The king was keeping her confined to the palace, and she escaped. His soldiers went to her home to retrieve her, and …'

Leilyn's eyes had gone wide, a hand flying to her mouth. ‘The poor girl. How can we blame her, then, for doing what she's done?'

‘I don't blame her,' Andala murmured. ‘I don't even know why I came here. Perhaps I should just leave her to do what she's doing, and take the world with her.'

Leilyn frowned. ‘You mustn't talk like that. You mustn't give up hope—'

But Andala was shaking her head. She rose, ready to leave. ‘I don't know why I came here. Why I thought—' She cut herself off with an odd, humourless laugh. ‘I suppose I was desperate.'

‘I am here for you, Andala,' her mother said, rising with her. ‘I'll help you in any way I can. You don't have to bear this burden on your own.'

Burden .

The word from her mother's lips was jarring, like an off-key note in a song.

‘What did you say?' Andala asked, voice deathly quiet.

Leilyn hesitated. Something in her eyes said she knew what Andala was thinking. She opened her mouth, closed it again. ‘I said I am here to help you,' she murmured finally. ‘That I—'

‘No,' Andala barked. ‘The part about the burden. That part sounded familiar.'

A silence, stone-heavy.

‘I think you've said something similar to me before, haven't you, Mother? Do you remember what it was? Because I do.'

She took a step towards Leilyn, so that they stood face-to-face. Her mother's expression was unreadable, her features set like stone. 224

‘ I am the nightingale, and you are my daughter ,' Andala recited. ‘ This is our burden to bear together . That was what you said to me, wasn't it, when I told you how afraid I was? I was five years old, Mother.' She spat the word as if it were a curse. ‘Five years old when you transferred your power to me. Because you had tired of it. Because you wished to live your life unencumbered, free of the pain, free of the cold and the dark. You gave that burden to a five-year-old child because you had tired of carrying it yourself. Have you come to understand that in the years I've been gone?'

There. She had said it. The thing they had always talked around, but not directly about; the thing that lingered in the back of her mind, in the pit of her stomach, every time that ice pierced her chest and she changed.

Andala had not become the nightingale at the moment of her birth, the way that Oriane had become the skylark. It had not been some natural transfer, some inevitable fate to which she had been born. Her mother had chosen to make her the nightingale without her consent, back when she had still been too young to give it, and too naive to understand what being the nightingale truly meant.

‘I didn't even really know,' she went on, unable to stop now she had started, ‘the extent of what you were passing down. The constant pain. The chill you can never shake. The loneliness that rots away at your damned core.' She let out another involuntary laugh, this one bitter as bile in her throat. ‘But you did. You knew, and you did it anyway. We didn't bear the burden together – you got rid of it for yourself and gave it to me. So you'll forgive me if I don't believe you really are here for me, or that you ever were. If that were the case, you would have held on to that burden yourself as long as you could. You would have done what you had to do to keep it away from your child.' 225

Andala stopped, finally, breathing heavily, as if she'd been running for her life. Leilyn's face was very white. It looked almost skeletal, like something that had loomed in the black depths of Andala's childhood nightmares.

‘What of the skylark?' Leilyn asked eventually, her voice measured and cool. ‘Did her mother not pass the power down to her daughter, as I did?'

‘Oriane's mother died after giving birth to her,' Andala spat. ‘If she passed it on willingly, it was only because she had no other choice.'

They stayed there, both still as stone.

‘What are you really doing here, Andala?'

Andala stared at her. ‘What do you mean, what am I doing here? I've just told you—'

Leilyn gave a dismissive wave. ‘What are you really doing, though? Have you come all this way just to berate me for the things that I've done?'

‘I've told you why I'm here,' she repeated, forcing herself to stay calm. ‘I'm trying to save the skylark, along with the rest of the world.'

Leilyn considered her. Her face was smooth, unreadable to anyone else. But Andala knew her mother, and she knew what that look meant.

‘You don't believe me.'

Leilyn said nothing.

Andala's brimming frustration spilled over. ‘For skies' sake, Mother, why else would I be here?'

Leilyn threw up her hands. ‘I don't know, Andala! Perhaps because you're running away again? You've run from everything else in your life, why shouldn't you be doing the same thing now?'

The accusation drove the air from her lungs like a gut-punch. But her mother wasn't done. Her gaze pierced Andala like a blade. 226

‘You ran away from me. You ran away from your husband. You ran away from your daughter before the girl had even known the touch of your hand. So when you come here out of the blue, and you tell me it's because there's something wrong with the skylark, can you blame me for thinking you're trying to run from that too?'

Every word was like a blow to bruised flesh. Leilyn knew the places to target, the wounds that had never quite healed. They all opened again now, one by one. Andala was defenceless. She could not deny any of it. Except, perhaps—

‘I'm not running from Oriane,' she mumbled, the words quiet, indistinct.

But like a predator sensing weakness, Leilyn advanced, and Andala shrank back, a weakling, a mouse.

‘Are you sure about that?' she asked. ‘Do you even know why you've really come?'

Before she could help it, Andala had let the question under her skin.

Was she sure? Did she know why she had come? Was she here to try to help Oriane – or had she simply fled from the chaos she'd caused, running not towards salvation but away from another thing that scared her?

Because she was a coward, after all. Andala could not deny that. She was afraid of the dark, afraid of her daughter, afraid of herself. Afraid of how much she might care for Oriane. Afraid that she had doomed her, and the rest of the world, to eternal darkness, and to death.

‘Is everything all right?'

Girard's voice snapped her out of her spiral. He entered the kitchen slowly, looking between Andala and Leilyn with concern. Leilyn turned away from them both. Andala could not speak. 227

She didn't need to. Girard seemed to sense what had happened.

‘There is so much at stake,' he said quietly. He sounded disappointed. ‘You need to put your differences aside. You need to talk about this properly.'

Shame spiralled through Andala. Girard was right. It was foolish of them to have wasted so much time arguing. She took a steadying breath and a step forward.

‘Mother,' she said. ‘I just need to know what you know about the skylark, about the nightingale – anything at all that might help.' She paused, eyes trained on her mother's back. ‘If not for me, then for Amie.'

Something in Leilyn seemed to sag at the sound of her granddaughter's name. Her shoulders rose and fell in a sigh, and she turned to face Andala.

‘I don't know much,' she said. ‘But I will tell you what I've heard.'